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A sincere and much-needed rant on social media’s downward spiral

No one likes change, but sometimes it’s just something we have to deal with, and we get used to it eventually. When social media apps update, it’s common for everyone to complain about it initially, as we did when Twitter switched likes to favorites or when Instagram completely changed its look. But we all get over it, and the updates become normal within a few days. That being said, this new Snapchat update isn’t one of those normal changes and is a complete TRAVESTY.

Words cannot even begin to describe how aggravating this new update is. While many were duped into updating the app manually or had their automatic updates on, some actually got an update without giving their permission. It’s a little ludicrous for an app to update on its own, even when the automatic updates are turned off. What’s the point of being able to turn off your automatic updates, then? This might be worse than the time that U2 album was uploaded to everyone’s iPhone without anyone knowing or wanting it.

Not only was this update unwanted, but it’s the final straw in Snapchat’s downward spiral. This downward spiral can be traced back to when they got rid of the public best friends feature. It was kind of fun to see who was flirting with who, or if your best friends were going behind your back and snapping other people. Ever since that change, Snapchat just wasn’t as fun anymore. Filters got old, and Instagram created its own story feature, which is honestly a much more pleasant experience than Snapchat’s. The pictures are higher-quality, and the filters, stickers and text just look less tacky.

Now don’t get us wrong, we love Snapchat. We maintain our streaks just as obsessively as the next person. During the past few months, we were warming back up to the app with its fun “snap lens” feature, which allows you to scan a code and insert a Vine or meme filter. But this new update is absolutely and absurdly ridiculous. It’s overwhelming and makes it way more difficult to see people’s stories. Sending Snapchats isn’t an easy click down the list anymore, either. The screen is strange-looking and cluttered, so every time we open the app we want to exit out immediately.

We also find ourselves constantly swiping to the left to view people’s stories but are not-so-pleasantly greeted with a Discover page. And we’ll be honest, we’d much rather watch a kid we met once freshman year get wasted on a Wednesday night than Buzzfeed’s snap-report on Bella Thorne’s outfit of the day — which is just sad. Not to mention, way fewer people are watching our stories, which is outright tragic! If we can’t bless other people’s lives with pictures of dogs we walk by or selfies of us throwing up a “suh dude” peace sign, what’s the point?

But we’re really just warming up with this whole Snapchat business. Social media sites everywhere have been getting pretty annoying lately. Like Facebook — what’s up with it “not being able to load any posts” when we’re scrolling through our timeline? This might not happen to everyone, but some of us have experienced Facebook just suddenly not being able to find any posts to load onto our timeline. Like come on people, there’s no way that our 500-plus friends and membership to the UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens page offer zero content at random times of the day. It’s just not possible.

Oh, and also? When we tag our friend in a meme, we really don’t need to get a notification every time some random person tags their friend. We realize it’s not difficult to click “turn notifications for this post off,” but why should we have to do that? Sorry, but we really don’t care about other people (who aren’t our friends) commenting on the same post. But worst of all, Facebook’s new algorithm is actually making it harder for you, dear reader, to see news articles! So to remedy this, click that “see first” button so you never miss an article.

To put it lightly, Instagram really grinds our gears too. We at the Clog would love to know who suggested getting rid of chronological order and replacing it with a weird algorithm and to give them a stern talking-to. Yeah, we get it, social media has been taken hostage by math and boring businesspeople who think they’re smarter than everyone else, but don’t ruin it for us normal people. With chronological order, there was comfort in knowing you weren’t liking someone’s post from a week ago like a total creep. Also, no one likes missing posts from people we actually care about because we’re seeing suggested accounts of Instagram models or ads for Sour Patch Kids that we’ll never follow.

Twitter however, has stayed relatively unproblematic. Not being able to save GIFs is annoying, and we don’t really care about what tweets we missed while we were away, but for the most part, Twitter is the only real one in the social media community. We can even forgive the fact they show us the tweets other people favorite, simply because every other social media site is just so much more annoying.

All in all, social media services need to go back to their roots, which involved making it easier to see who was flirting with who and to talk to strangers on the internet. In all seriousness, there’s been a trend of these sites catering more to businesses, with their advertisements, algorithms and more. It seems like it’s all about the money and not about the people. For all those interested, according to CBS News, there’s actually a petition going around to change at least Snapchat back to how it was before.

So who knows, maybe the power of the people will persuade the top dogs at Snapchat HQ to have pity on its disgruntled users. But then again, who knows. All we know is that the old Snapchat is dead, and like Taylor Swift, no one really cares for the new one, so we’ll be moving our morning coffee pictures and our pictures of golden hour on Memorial Glade to Instagram stories instead.

About this blog

The Daily Clog (Cal+Blog) accumulates various tidbits about Berkeley and college life. We focus on the UC campus, the city of Berkeley and Berkeley’s online community. We give our two cents on all the goings-on.